The U.S. government–that gigantic apparatus that swallows some $4 trillion each year and solves every human problem–is going to be run by either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Francis Menton reminds us: “… take your pick: give control of your annual $4 trillion to a crazed, self-absorbed ego-maniac, or alternatively to a crazed, self-absorbed crooked ego-maniac. Isn’t government great?”
And, after 80 or so years of promises and tens of trillions spent, have any of the major problems been solved? Of course, it’s the opposite. Indeed, it’s fair to say that all of the big government redistribution programs are in crisis. A trillion dollars of annual spending on “poverty” and there are close to twice as many people today said to be in poverty than the day the War on Poverty started. Medicaid, supposed to be a temporary thing for a few years until poverty was eliminated, instead explodes bigger and bigger every year (now at over $550 billion per year and still rapidly growing). Social Security and Medicare are ponzi schemes careening toward a Madoff-like crash one or two or three decades out. Obamacare, only a few years old, is widely reported to be well into an insurance death spiral. And now we’re going to get one or the other of crazy Donald or crooked Hillary to take it all over.
Yes Donald Trump is extremely flawed, but there is some hope–just maybe–“he has a little idea how private business works.”
Hillary? Her deep thoughts about economic policy are more or less the same as those of your typical African potentate, say a Robert Mugabe or a Mobuto Sese Seko. Get all the taxpayer funds you can get your hands on, and direct them to “economic development” projects run by your friends and relatives. Those people will then kick back substantial portions to yourself. The government-directed economic development projects all fail. Your relatives and friends get rich. You retire a billionaire. The people starve.
Don’t believe me? Then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s gone on in Haiti. Trading Economics reports the entire GDP of Haiti at under $9 billion per year — an almost impossibly small amount for a country of over 10 million people. That makes annual per capita GDP under $1000. (Granted, the economic statistics that come out of Haiti are iffy; but they are the best we’ve got.) In 2010 they had a big earthquake in Haiti. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. Bill Clinton became head of something called the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. Bill’s Commission got billions of dollars in funding for Haiti via both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
Guess who ultimately got the big lucrative contracts? Mr. Menton quotes from Breitbart:
Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, landed a lucrative and historically rare Haitian “gold exploitation permit,” while Clinton Foundation donors, including Digicel mobile phone company founder Denis O’Brien, were winning multi-million dollar contracts that would siphon massive profits from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
There is essentially no meaningful private business in Haiti, and the country is as poor as ever. But the Clintons’ many friends and relatives have done very well in Haiti and “the Clintons themselves have used the donations to the Clinton Foundation to support their lifestyles and their permanent staff. It truly is the Mugabe model.” Read more from the Manhattan Contrarian here.
